


What You Can See

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2016 [49]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, Supernatural
Genre: AU, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 21:52:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7658017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate multiverse, Any, Ghost hunters" and inspired by Episode 32 of the Lore Podcast.</p><p>John Sheppard can see things no one else can. Rodney McKay wants to find them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Can See

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Lore: Tampered](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/218617) by Aaron Mahnke. 



John was startled out of his ongoing calculation of the Fibonacci sequence by the sound of footsteps outside his cell. He sat up, swung his legs over the side of his bunk, and waited, wary.  
  
His JAG officer, Daniel Jackson, appeared on the other side of the bars.  
  
"Good morning, Major," he said.  
  
John inclined his head politely. "Major."  
  
"There's someone here I'd like you to speak to," Jackson said. "His name is Dr. Rodney McKay. I need you to be completely honest with him and tell him everything that happened, all right?"  
  
John's spine stiffened. A doctor. Not a medical doctor; the military used its own. Even if Jackson was looking for some kind of medical diagnosis as a defense for the whole clusterfuck that was John trying to rescue Holland, Mitch, and Dex, he'd have used a military medical officer. A civilian doctor meant one thing: mental illness defense. Not that the military didn't have its own mental health professionals, but Jackson was probably looking for something outlandish, was grasping at straws.  
  
John wasn't crazy. He'd be looking at the inside of a cell for the rest of his life.  
  
But so far Daniel had treated him with dignity, hadn't automatically sneered at John's unruly hair (it was just _like that_ ) or assumed he was an idiot because he occasionally had problems with authority (and okay, someone who had problems with authority should have thought twice about a career in the military). So John nodded.  
  
Jackson nodded to someone outside John's field of view, and an MP unlocked the cell, escorted John to the interrogation room he was all too familiar with these days.  
  
At least it was a change from the cell.  
  
Dr. Rodney McKay was - hot.  
  
Blue eyes, broad shoulders, strong jaw, steady gaze.  
  
Damn, but John must have been locked up a lot longer than he realized.  
  
But he was definitely a civilian, dressed in a sharp dark suit, shirt, and tie, and carrying some kind of fancy datapad.  
  
“I’ll be just outside if you need anything,” Jackson said. “Water, coffee, cake with a file.”  
  
John blinked, startled. The MP officer growled wordlessly at Jackson, who raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and said, “Kidding! Kidding.”  
  
Then the door clicked shut.  
  
John swallowed hard, pasted a pleasant smile on his face, the kind he used to piss off his superior officers when they were condescending to him. “So, where do you want to start? Are we going to talk about my mother?”  
  
Dr. McKay, who’d been tapping away at his datapad, paused and looked up, raised his eyebrows. “Why would we talk about your mother?”  
  
“Doesn’t everyone’s crazy start with their parents?”  
  
Realization crossed Dr. McKay’s face. “Everyone has daddy issues, but that’s not why I’m here. I’m sure your attorney told you, I’m Dr. Rodney McKay.”  
  
“I’m Major John Sheppard.”  
  
“I have doctorates in physics and mechanical engineering,” Dr. McKay continued. “I need you to tell me everything that happened, from lift-off to crash.”  
  
Oh. _Oh._ “Are you saying there was some kind of mechanical failure in the plane?”  
  
“Don’t overthink our time together, Major. Just tell me what happened.”  
  
So John did. Since Dr. McKay had asked him to start from lift-off, he didn’t bother rehashing what had happened before, when he’d received news that Mitch’s chopper had gone down behind enemy lines during a med-evac, how he’d asked his CO to let him lead the rescue, how he’d been denied, how he’d chosen to follow the one rule that had followed him through all of training: no one gets left behind.  
  
Instead he went through his pre-flight check, closed his eyes and remembered the switches and buttons beneath his hands, the familiar, comforting rumble of the engines as his chopper warmed up.  
  
“Open your eyes,” Dr. McKay said. “We’ll come back to that version of events.”  
  
John obeyed, startled, and found himself looking right into McKay’s bright blue eyes.  
  
“So, you’re in the air,” McKay said. “What happened next?”  
  
What happened was pretty routine. He flew, headed for Mitch’s last known coordinates, just like he’d been trained. He could see smoke rising in the distance, could see the tents turn into little houses turn into a settlement at the base of the hill. Enemy territory.  
  
John paused.  
  
Dr. McKay, who’d been scribbling notes on his datapad with some fancy digital stylus, raised his eyebrows. “Major,” he said, “I’m sure your attorney advised you to be completely honest with me and tell me everything that happened.”  
  
John swallowed.  
  
“Remember,” Dr. McKay said, leaning in, “I’m not a shrink. I’m a scientist. I’m here to gather data and form appropriate conclusions. So tell me what happened.”  
  
John licked his lips, nervous. The first time he’d told Jackson this part, he’d still been shaking from adrenaline, sick with grief, his friends’ corpses flashing behind his eyelids every time he blinked. He’d refused to tell it again and given Jackson strict instructions not to tell anyone about it, not to use it as part of a defense.  
  
“Major,” Dr. McKay said gently, “I’m not here to judge you.”  
  
John sucked in a deep breath. “I was looking for a good landing spot, one technically outside enemy territory but that would give me a clear path to what I thought was the wreckage, but that was also on a route with some cover. I didn’t have a navigator with me, so I was on my own. That was fine. I’d done that before. But then - I heard it. Banging noises on the outside of the chopper. Like - like someone was _punching_ it. And there they were. Dozens of them. Little...creatures. Four-limbed, but not really humanoid. They had - had these ears, kind of like an owl’s, you know? And they were hanging on to a moving chopper, and they were dancing all over it, hitting and smashing and I swear one of them pulled open a panel and I saw sparks and then my gauges went haywire and the chopper started to dip. And one of them threw itself against the windshield, and I couldn’t see anything except - except its red eyes.”  
  
Dr. McKay, to his credit, looked completely unruffled by the crazy that had just spooled itself past John’s lips. “How big were the creatures?”  
  
“Um...different sizes. The tiny ones were - six inches, maybe? The biggest was maybe three feet. One of those made a grab for the rotor, and then I was going down, and -”  
  
“Let’s pause here, Major.” Dr. McKay stood up, went to tap on the window. “Could we get some water in here for Major Sheppard? And some coffee for me.”  
  
It was Jackson who delivered the beverages. John couldn’t look at him, feeling betrayed, but he accepted the water gratefully enough.  
  
Dr. McKay took one tiny sip of his coffee and then scribbled at his datapad, waiting for John to finish his drink.  
  
“Are you ready?”  
  
John nodded. “I - yeah.”  
  
“Okay. Close your eyes. Pretend I’m with you there, and I’m blind. And tell me what happened when you first noticed the creatures.”  
  
John obeyed, closed his eyes, took a shaky breath. “I - um. The banging. Was loud. But it wasn’t...quite like punching. It sounded more like...metal on metal? Like they had tiny hammers. Only - only there’s also scratching, like animal claws. Big animal claws. The sound of tearing metal was -” He shuddered.  
  
“Did you smell anything?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Did you notice any odd smells?”  
  
Besides his own terror? John forced himself to take another deep breath, this one steadier than the last one. “I - oh. Uh - rotten eggs. Sulfur, maybe? Like the kind at natural hot springs.”  
  
“Anything else?”  
  
“Not - besides the usual smells in a chopper. Leather. Fuel. The hot desert air.”  
  
“All right. Now, take me one step beforehand. You’re flying, searching for Mitch’s last-known coordinates. Do you hear anything unusual?”  
  
Shifting focus and going backward was weird, but John kept his eyes closed, searched his own memory. “No. Well, there’s a kind of clicking in the engine, but it’s been an ongoing problem with this chopper, and maintenance gets after it every time I fly -” They wouldn’t be getting after it anymore - “so I ignore it. Except…”  
  
“Except what?”  
  
“Except it’s coming from the wrong place. From below the chopper, not the engine. And the rhythm is a little off. Like...it was mimicking the usual knocking from the engine?”  
  
“Anything else?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Did you notice any unusual smells?”  
  
And that was how it went, John with his eyes closed, walking Dr. McKay through the whole tale backwards. They had multiple drink breaks, and Dr. McKay’s wrist must have been sore from all the notes he was taking.  
  
When it was finally finished, John opened his eyes. Dr. McKay wasn’t even looking at him, was swiping at the screen of his datapad.  
  
“So, am I crazy?” John asked.  
  
“I’m not qualified to diagnose that kind of thing,” Dr. McKay said absently. He flipped his datapad around. “Now, which image best resembles the creature you saw?”  
  
John’s heart stopped. There were six pictures on the screen, and in the top right-hand corner was exactly the thing he’d seen. He pointed. “There. Right there. That one. How -?”  
  
“You’re not the first pilot to have seen these or have your aircraft sabotaged by them,” Dr. McKay said.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Not all pilots can see them, which is what makes investigating instances of their tampering difficult. Those who can see them, however, are extremely useful.”  
  
“You said you were a physicist and an engineer,” John said slowly.  
  
“I said I have PhDs in physics and mechanical engineering, but I am neither a physicist nor an engineer. I am, for lack of a better term, a paranormal investigator.”  
  
“A ghost hunter?”  
  
“Not just ghosts. They’re typically the least troublesome of issues I handle.” Dr. McKay turned his datapad back around and swiped at the screen some more.  
  
“So I’m not crazy?”  
  
“No, Major Sheppard. You’re not crazy. At least, not to me.” Dr. McKay smiled kindly. “Thank you for taking the time to speak to me, and for being honest. You have excellent recall.” He started to rise.  
  
“Wait, that’s it? Am I going to rot in Leavenworth forever?”  
  
“I can’t make any predictions about the legal outcome of your situation. Those inquiries are best directed to Major Jackson. That being said, the circumstances of your crash and your ability to see what others cannot may mitigate in your favor.”  
  
“What does that mean?” John asked.  
  
“That means, if you don’t end up rotting in Leavenworth, you’ll be working with me.” Something gleamed in Dr. McKay’s eyes that made John’s heart skip a beat.  
  
Then Dr. McKay went and knocked on the window. “I believe I have everything I need.”  
  
The door opened, and Jackson and the MP reappeared. Jackson shook Dr. McKay’s hand.  
  
“Thank you for contacting me,” Dr. McKay said.  
  
“I zealously advocate for my clients,” Jackson replied, and John had the sense that Dr. McKay and Jackson knew each other beyond this brief intersection for John’s case.  
  
Dr. McKay reached into his pocket, drew out a cell phone, and hit speed dial. “Lorne, get Winchester senior out to the hangar to examine the wreckage of both choppers. See if Winchester junior has those journals.” He strode out of the room, still issuing instructions to Lorne, whoever that was.  
  
John narrowed his eyes. Jackson’s paralegal was a Lieutenant Winchester, who was in law school at Stanford. The kid was about six and a half feet tall and was still narrow in the shoulders but would probably fill out and end up looking like a hulk. All John knew about the kid was that he was brilliant, his father had been a marine in Vietnam, and he had an older brother. Jackson had great things to say about the lawyer and soldier young Winchester would become.  
  
“Let me guess,” John said, “back to my cell?”  
  
“Breakfast, actually,” Jackson said, nodding at the MP. “We need to discuss your legal options going forward. How would you feel about being grounded? Staying out of Leavenworth, but being grounded.”  
  
John’s throat closed. No flying, not ever?  
  
“Your new post would be less combat, more investigatory, but independent of MPs,” Jackson continued. “If a mission required flying, obviously you’d be the first choice, but this would be a more boots on the ground posting.”  
  
“What kind of posting, Major?”  
  
Jackson held the door open wider for him. “Well, Major, what _do_ you know about ghosts?”


End file.
